Payment Fraud Screener
A two-minute check on every payment request that changes banking details, adds a new payee or arrives in a hurry, plus the written rule your staff follow when you're away
The problem
The email looks right. The supplier's name, the usual invoice layout, a polite line about a change of bank account "effective immediately", and a due date that happens to be Friday. Your bookkeeper pays it because paying suppliers is her job. The real supplier calls three weeks later asking where the money went. Business email compromise is the fraud small businesses meet most, and it works because it arrives dressed as a routine task on a busy afternoon. This skill is the pause button: a short screen before any payment that changes where the money goes.
The tool
Once installed, this skill reads a payment request the way a suspicious controller would. Paste the email, the invoice text, or a description of the request, and it looks for the pattern: new or changed banking details, a new payee, urgency, a reply-to address that doesn't match the sender, a request to keep it quiet, a slightly altered domain, an invoice number out of sequence, a round amount that doesn't match a purchase order. It scores the request on what it can see, and it names the one check that would settle it, which is almost always a phone call to a number you already had on file before the email arrived.
It also writes the house rule. One page: which payments need a call-back, who can approve a banking change, what happens when the owner is on a plane, and the script for the call so staff aren't embarrassed to make it. The month-end routine in the Monthly Finance Close gets a line for "banking changes this month, each one confirmed by phone".
What's inside
- A request screen: paste the email or invoice and get the red flags found, a risk read, and the one verification step that settles it
- A call-back script for confirming banking changes with a supplier, using a number from your own records
- A one-page payment-controls policy: approval limits, dual sign-off for new payees and banking changes, and the rule for urgent requests
- A new-payee checklist, so the first payment to anyone goes through the same steps every time
- A monthly log line for the finance close: changes made, who verified, how
- An incident script: who to call in the first hour if a payment did go to the wrong account
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Answer the setup questions once: who pays bills, how, your approval limits today, and the suppliers you pay most.
- 4Before any payment that adds a payee, changes banking details or arrives with a deadline, paste the request and ask for the screen.
- 5Adopt the one-page policy it writes, give it to whoever pays bills, and keep the log line in your month-end close.
Example
A Kitchener machine shop gets an email from its steel supplier's accounts department: new remittance details, a PDF on the right letterhead, please update before Friday's payment of $23,400. The bookkeeper pastes it in. The screen finds three flags: the sender's domain has an extra letter, the reply-to goes somewhere else, and the signature names a person the shop has never dealt with. Risk read: high. The settling step is a call to the supplier's rep at the number on last year's contract. The rep has never heard of the change. The payment goes to the old account, the shop forwards the email to the supplier's IT, and the policy gets its first entry: no banking change without a call-back, no exceptions for Fridays.
Pro tip
The call-back works only if you dial a number you already had. A phone number in the suspicious email belongs to the person who sent it. Keep supplier contacts in your accounting system from the day you sign with them, and when a request can't be verified before the deadline, miss the deadline. A real supplier would rather be paid Monday than never.
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